Sunday, September 23, 2012

While I deal with The DiaBride’s bad back (with her physical
therapist recently asking her how much of a “hands-on husband” she had to limit
her lifting/laundry/etc. burden), the Lazy One is coming a little short this
weekend. While that may be cause for joy
in some corners, since I realize that most have turned their attention to the
Browns or to the MLB pennant races – as very little has changed regarding the
Indians in the past…um, two months – and as the Indians’ season s…l…o…w…l…y
crawls to Game 162, most attention has been placed on whether the Indians will
be drafting fourth of fifth next year (who said the Browns have a monopoly on
the amateur draft generating…um, excitement) and what moves will be made to the
Indians coaching staff and Front Office.

While most of that will shake out in the coming
weeks/months, there is still this overwhelming sense of “what just happened
here” surrounding the Tribe. Yes, I know
that it’s been a solid couple of months since the bottom fell out…with the
bottom falling out a couple times after that and people at the corner of
Carnegie and Ontario are running out of fingers to point in a direction other
than their own. But to watch this team
absolutely slog through the last two months (and look BAD doing it) is to echo
the sentiments of what a “Front Office Type” had to say to B-Pro’s John Perrotto regarding the Tribe and their recent…um, performance. And…well, it’s not pretty:

Indians: “They might
be the worst team—from a fundamentals standpoint—in the big leagues. They kill
themselves with silly mistakes.”

And for as much as people can point to a flawed roster and
to an unproductive off-season (both valid points), isn’t that what we see –
night in and night out – a team that finds new ways to lose?

For as much promise that there seemed to be after last
season with certain players, how have the Indians looked THIS bad for THIS
long?

As frustrating as it is to watch the Indians in terms of
stalled development and regression, the appearance of a team that’s going
through the motions and is either ill-prepared or ill-equipped to compete at
the MLB level is what gnaws at most of the fanbase…at least those that are
still watching. Whether that goes back
to the coaching staff or the Front Office that assembled the “talent” for said
coaching staff to put into the lineup and into the pitching staff is a question
that’s been asked before in this space (and in others); but it’s the MAIN
question facing this organization going forward. Because it goes back to the “Nature vs.Nurture” argument from a month ago in that it has to be asked whether these
players are simply flawed and were overrated in expectations for them or if the
players (seemingly the whole lot of them) can regress this quickly and this
profoundly.

Is there talent there – the talent that was on display at
times in 2011 and (ever so briefly) in 2012 – and the execution is lacking or
is the lack of execution a by-product of the flawed “talent” on hand?

Because for as much talk as there is to say, “hey, look at Oakland…THAT’S what the Indians should be and THAT’S how
they should be approaching their off-season”, does everyone really realize what
Oakland did
this past off-season, and in the years prior to this one?

Prior to this year, the A’s have largely operated in that “no-man’s
land” of 70 to 80 win seasons (the “purgatory” that everyone was so afraid of for
the Tribe about two months ago…that “8th seed in the NBA playoffs”
spot) for the last 5 years. They made
move after move (everyone knows they traded Carlos Gonzalez and others for Matt
Holiday, who would play 93 games for them, right?) in an attempt to find the
lightning in the bottle that is currently taking place in the Bay Area. And this past off-season was probably the biggest
make-over since the Mulder, Hudson, Zito days came to an end. In case you weren’t paying attention to Oakland’s moves at the
end of last October, the A’s saw Josh Willingham and David DeJesus depart via
FA, along with Rich Harden, Hideki Matsui and Coco Crisp. Though Crisp would return later in the
off-season on a 2-year deal, that’s basically the ENTIRE A’s offense from a
74-88 A’s team from last year with 4 of their 6 most productive hitters (if you
count Ryan Sweeney, who was traded…but I’ll get to that) from a pretty putrid
2011 offense moving on, largely via FA.

Then, from December 9 to December 28, they traded Trevor
Cahill, Gio Gonzalez, Andrew Bailey, Craig Breslow, and the aforementioned Ryan
Sweeney for a group of (what was deemed at the time to be) prospects as the A’s
were unquestionably seen to be “rebuilding” as the scope of what was changing
from 2011 to 2012 bordered on seismic. Just
to be clear here on the players that they GOT RID OF, Cahill was a 23-year-old pitcher
who had an uneven 2011 season (4.16 ERA, 1.42 WHIP), but was a season removed
from his 2010 campaign, in which he posted a 2.97 ERA, 1.11 WHIP as a
22-year-old RHP. Further than that,
Gonzalez was a 25-year-old LHP who had posted an ERA of 3.23 in 2010 and 3.12
in 2011. At the time he was traded,
Gonzalez was about to enter his first year of arbitration, meaning the A’s had
THREE more years of control over Gonzalez, which is actually one fewer year of
control than Oakland had over Cahill, who was under club control through the
2015 season when he was traded.

So, they traded 3 years of club control over a 25-year-old
LHP that had posted back-to-back seasons with ERA’s under 3.25 and four years of club control over a
23-year-old RHP that had already posted a sub-3.00 ERA season in MLB, with a
career 3.91 ERA in 96 starts. That’s
their #1 and #3 starter when the 2011 season started (with Brett Anderson being
their #2 starter before he was injured) that would be traded the following
off-season…and pitchers that were their 2nd and 3rd most valuable starters. They also traded their closer in Bailey and their top LH
set-up men in Breslow, this after trading another of their top set-up men (Brad
Ziegler) at the Trading Deadline in July of 2011, and 3 of their top 4relievers, as measured by FIP.

Again, that was a 74-88 A’s team in 2011 that gave up
MULTIPLE years of control over two of their best young starting pitchers, their
closer and other bullpen arms, AND watched their two best offensive players
(Willingham and DeJesus) walk for nothing.

Of course, in making those moves, they added a number of key
contributors to the 2012 club that finds itself in contention (plus the Cespedes
signing), but at the time those trades were consummated, few saw the players
that they acquired having this much of an impact…particularly this
quickly, and you should read this if you think this was expected or what they have done provides any kind of blueprint. But to reshape their team and “create”
a contender in short order from a 74-88 team in 2011, that’s what the A’s did
this past off-season…

If you want to
try to put that into context for the Indians in the present tense…well, you
can’t because the A’s turned Cahill and Gonzalez into MORE valuable young
pitching and the Indians simply don’t have an equivalent to what Cahill and
Gonzalez were for the A’s last off-season.
If you want to look at the most valuable trade chips, you already know
who they are – namely Cabrera and Santana, with Perez, then Masterson coming in
behind those guys and Choo likely being past that, largely based on club
control and assumed salaries. Brantley
would be in there somewhere, as would McAllister, but those two are still
largely unproven in MLB…at least not to the extent that the players the A’s
traded last off-season were.

Maybe you break
up the bullpen past Perez (Joe Smith and…um…) to see if you can net more
starting pitching, but the A’s are being paced by a pitching staff that boasts
young arms and to acquire young and under-club-control-for-a-while arms, you
need to give up something of value to receive those arms to wish on in an
effort to improve this Indians’ team in the present tense and (more
importantly) the future tense as pitching is what wins for small-market teams and
– for as much as it would seem to make sense for the Indians to make a play for
Ike Davis (if he truly is available…and a terrific write-up from Ryan Richards of LGT here on the situation – the Indians need to identify the young arms that
are going to pull them out of this crevasse.
In terms of those arms that figure to be around in 2013 – and I’m not counting
Fauxberto among them – none of them has been even close to league average
(compared to the offense, which has a fair share of above-MLB-average players...and that list does not include The Chiz) and
unfortunately you’re looking at the same arms for next year.

And what’s frustrating there is that Oakland (and I’ll keep
invoking them just because they’re the “flavor of the month” and this year’s
model of a small-market team that “proves” that money isn’t the biggest factor)
has EIGHT starters with a better ERA+ than any Tribe starter, with five of
those aforementioned A’s eight being 25 years old or younger. Perhaps guys like Masterson and Ubaldo are
able to “find” some semblance of their effective selves and maybe McAllister and/or Kluber is more
than the barely-back-end-of-the-rotation fodder that we’ve seen from
Tomlin/Huff/Gomez, and maybe Carlos Carrasco (who is younger than Kluber) comes
back from TJ surgery to assert himself at the top-of-the-rotation going
forward. But short of those things –
that ALL haven’t happened yet – happening and short of a large influx of
(likely ill-advised) FA spending in a market that doesn’t have that many
attractive options, the Indians are in a position not all that dissimilar to
what the A’s (and a number of other small-market teams) faced last year as a
case can be easily made for a complete dismantling of the roster, just as a
(much less compelling) case can be made for augmenting what is already in
place, with the additions coming via FA.

But that’s what faces the Indians this off-season, as much attention
figures to be paid to who will be filling out the lineup card and what the
Indians’ Front Office looks like when some MAJOR restructuring looks to take
place. Because over the last couple of
months – where the club that (in the words whispered in Perrotto’s ear) “might
be the worst team—from a fundamentals standpoint—in the big leagues” has limped
and slogged to the finish line, anything that could have been looked at as a “bright
spot” has been overshadowed by the pall hanging over this team and this
organization.

Whether it is truly “darkest before the dawn” is what will
be tested this off-season as the alternative is…well, some awfully dark days
ahead.

2 comments:

“Schools are battling as it is,” he claimed. “To are windows 7 professional retail version convinced anyone has that tiny respect that they would steal from their own individual group is upsetting.”

Even though typical lessons are out for summer months, buy autocad lt 2013 the athletic sophisticated is utilised for Little League baseball and many sporting camp functions, he explained, too as some summer time faculty systems.